Everyone shook their heads. Visser Three looked satisfied and went off to his quarters to upload more videos of his new pets to the internet.

"Well," said a Controller, "at least he's getting out again."

* * *

Marco floated idyllically on magenta clouds. He held up one arm in front of his face and watched it morph from human to gorilla and back again.

"Goddamn it, Marco, where are your pants?" Jake's angry face appeared in Marco's line of vision.

"Dude!" greeted Marco. "When did you get here? Where's the—where's the door?"

"Marco, we're all sick of this. Every day after school, you come to Cassie's barn and drop acid for hours. You're scaring the animals and setting a bad example for Ax."

"Woah, Jake, your face is all...melty." Marco waved his arms in the air. If he concentrated, he could make Jake's face distort using just his fingertips.

"Wonderful," muttered Jake. "Look, can't you just—"

<If he doesn't have to wear pants, why do I have to wear pants?> came Ax's petulant mind-voice.

"Where is everyone coming from?" laughed Marco.

"Ax, go back outside. Tell everyone Marco's not coming on the mission."

"What? A mission?" Marco stood up, or tried to. "You can't do a mission without me. You're too ugly by yourselves. I'm the expert." He waved the magenta fog away, leaving only the familiar setting of Cassie's barn behind. "Where are we going?"

"It doesn't matter, because you are absolutely not coming."

"My gorilla has fingers! Fingers, Jake!" Marco held up his fingers to demonstrate. Jake apparently wasn't impressed, because he turned around and went back outside. Marco crawled after him.

"Alright, so we're going to use the new entrance to the Yeerk Pool that Tobias just found," Jake was explaining to the others, who had gathered around him. "It's behind that old pizza place, not too far from the beach. I was thinking we could fly there using our seagull morphs, and then morph to flies on the roof—"

"Um, Jake?" Cassie interrupted. Jake turned around to see Marco, lying on the grass and blinking in the sudden sunlight.

"Where are his pants?" asked Rachel.

"Ignore him. Now, once we get inside, we're going to try to find someone who is going to the Blade ship, preferably Visser Three himself. From there, we're going to try and figure out exactly why she's coming back—"

"Are we going to outer space? Guys? Are we going to see the moon? I know all about the moon."

"I can so morph. I can so totally morph." Marco laughed again. "Check this out."

Marco began to morph to his gorilla form, but about halfway through he appeared to change his mind. But instead of reverting back to human, he somehow managed to go directly to another animal. Within moments, the Animorphs were staring at a half-gorilla/half-wolf thing that couldn't even stand upright.

<New battle morph. Check it. Wolf-rilla. So jealous. So jealous.>

"Let's just go," said Jake.

* * *

Visser Three hadn't been out to graze in almost a month. Instead, he just stuck his hooves in bowls of half-heated ramen noodles and crushed bags of Doritos. Really, it worked just as well. The MSG was starting to give him migraines, though.

It had all started when Edriss had agreed to go out to dinner with him. It had gone astonishingly well, once he remembered not to bellow at the human waiters. She'd found his strong reaction to human food ‘charming' rather than disgusting. It had been so very long since he'd really been in a body with a sense of taste. All those underlings he'd eaten hardly counted, since he tended to swallow them whole.

Once they were outside, she'd kissed him, which was nice, but not as nice as the taste of salt, or butter. When they arrived back at the ship, he had demorphed because he'd felt so defenseless in that pathetic human shape. They'd gone back to his room together.

And then…it all went wrong. He'd turned around to find her staring at him expectantly.

"Aren't you going to morph back to human?" she'd asked.

<Why should I?> he'd said.

She'd scoffed. "Do you honestly expect me to—?"

<What?> Now he was offended. <Don't you like this body?>

She told him not to be ridiculous.

He demanded to know what was so ridiculous about the most coveted host in the Yeerk Empire?

She asked if it would kill him to shelve his ego for a moment and think about someone other than himself.

He told her that she was just being closed-minded and he was quite certain that they could figure something out if she just gave him a moment to think.

She said she had no intention of laying a finger on his Andalite form, and that was that. By then, they'd awoken half the ship with their yelling. It had only spiraled downward from there, culminating in Edriss storming off in a frustrated rage and returning to Leera that very same evening.

About a week ago, Visser Three had started constructing a superweapon that would just blow the entire west coast off the map, and the Andalite bandits with it. But depression had made it difficult to concentrate for long, and so various pieces of metal were strewn about his apartments, gathering dust and cat hair.

<Oh Junjun,> said Visser Three, stroking a tuxedo-patterned cat absently as he watched more Maru videos. <What's the point?>

<You could kill yourself,> suggested Alloran.

<Shut up, nobody asked you.>

Junjun bonked her forehead against Visser Three's in response.

<You're right. I didn't need her anyway. I've got you!>

* * *

<WOAH! WUH-OH! I'M FLYING. HOLY SHIT. HAHAHAHAAA!>

<Shut up, Marco,> advised Tobias.

<WHERE ARE WE?>

<We're on the Blade ship, you moron,> said Rachel. <Did you really just miss the last hour?>

<WHAAAT?>

<Stop yelling,> said Cassie. <You're making it impossible to concentrate. Ax, how are we doing?>

<We have been in fly morph for approximately fifty-two of your minutes.>

<I have so many eyes. I am made of eyes.>

<Marco, shut up.> That was Jake. <Now, we're probably going to want to find a storage room or somewhere we can demorph safely. From there, we—>

<Voices!> interrupted Rachel. <Listen!>

Indeed, from just around the corner came two voices, one male and one female.

"We can't begin to tell you how grateful we are to you for agreeing to do this," said the male voice. The speaker was clearly anxious, jittery, even. "We have already transferred the data you requested to your ship."

"Hm," said the female. She sounded unimpressed. "And where is he?"

"In his quarters. We didn't tell him you were coming. We thought it would be best…"

"I see."

"We're at a complete loss. He's started bringing back housecats. He has at least ten."

"Housecats?"

<Hey. Hey. Heyheyhey. IT'S MOM.>

<Marco!> Jake cried. <No!>

But it was too late. Marco was already demorphing.

<What do we do?> cried Cassie. <We have to stop him before—>

<Too late,> said Tobias. Marco was now completely human again, and the others could only watch helplessly as he lurched around the corner towards the sound of his mother's voice.

"Hey! Hey! Helloooo!"

Visser One and the male human-Controller both turned. An adolescent human-Controller appeared to be stumbling in their direction and attempting to get their attention through elaborate hand signals.

Sort of weird how Marco is still on that acid high, even though he is in a fly morph. I mean, wouldn't it have worn off or wouldn't the drug be so strong that his fly morph wouldn't be able to handle it?Why am I even trying to make sense of this?

Do you recall the Animorphs? A series of books about five (later six) teenagers who are granted the ability to transform into any animal so that they can defend the earth from a body-stealing alien menace? Well, we do. That's why we're going to review them. All 64 books, from start to finish. Here we go.